Leigh Fibers
As Upstate South Carolina’s premier independent industrial real estate brokerage firm, Lyons Industrial Properties takes great pride in finding unique and creative solutions to our clients’ real estate needs. Throughout our 21-year history, we have developed mutually beneficial business partnerships with our clients—our firm’s continued success depends directly on our ability to help our clients achieve their objectives.
Our ongoing relationship with Leigh Fibers, a prominent local business and a worldwide leader in textile recycling, perfectly exemplifies our business philosophy in action. Since initiating our partnership with Leigh Fibers in the summer of 2019, we have helped the company lease its surplus warehouse space, turning vacant space at its facility in Wellford into a new rental revenue stream. We have leased 80,000 square feet of warehouse space to three unique tenants over the past six months—a win-win-win result for Leigh Fibers, the new tenants that needed more space, and Lyons Industrial Properties.
Thanks to this success, the President of Leigh Fibers, Mr. Daniel Mason, decided to consolidate the company’s operational footprint into three of its five buildings, thereby freeing up two buildings for leasing purposes. This was an ambitious plan, as several of the warehouse bays still housed very large pieces of manufacturing equipment that would need to be relocated.
And then COVID-19 hit.
As with many businesses in the Upstate and around the world, Leigh Fibers’ operations were significantly impacted. The company was faced with reduced demand for its products, and fewer orders to fulfill…and therefore, less work for its employees.
However, thanks to this leasing project, Mr. Mason was able to redirect his staff to spearhead the renovation of the warehouse bays. This included decommissioning the old equipment in the two front buildings, and relocating it to the three buildings in the back of the property. Then, the Leigh Fibers staff would prepare these vacant spaces to be marketed to prospective tenants. The staff was able to handle the majority of these tasks, and received training on new ones.
By keeping this project in-house, and nearly three months after COVID-19’s arrival, Leigh Fibers has still not laid off or reduced the hours of a single employee. That’s over 140 employees!
And now, as our great state continues to open back up for business, Leigh Fibers will be well-positioned to capitalize on the increased commercial activity and lease more of its warehouse space.
We are extremely proud of our business partnership with Leigh Fibers…this is a unique real estate success story during a very difficult time that our Upstate community can truly celebrate!